“Coming this way,” the first man added.

“How many French?” Sir Thomas asked.

“All of them,” the two men said together.

“Then let us look,” Sir Thomas said, and he led the two men and his aides inland through the pines. He had to duck under the branches. The wood was wide and deep, thick and shadowed. Pine needles overlay the sandy soil, muffling the sound of the horses’ hooves.

The wood ended abruptly, giving way to the undulating heath that stretched away under the morning sun. And there, filling the wide world, were white crossbelts against blue coats.

“Señor?” one of the partisans said, gesturing at the French as though he had produced them himself.

“Dear God,” Sir Thomas said softly. Then he said nothing more for a while, but just stared at the approaching enemy. The two partisans thought the general was too shocked to speak. He was, after all, watching disaster approach.

But Sir Thomas was thinking. He was noticing that the French marched with muskets slung. They could not see enemy troops to their front and so, instead of marching into battle, they were marching to battle. There was a difference. Men marching to battle might have loaded muskets, but the muskets would not be cocked. Their artillery was unde-ployed, and it took time for the French to deploy guns because the cannons’ heavy barrels had to be lifted from the travel position to the firing position. In short, Sir Thomas thought, these Frenchmen were not ready for a fight. They were expecting a fight, but not yet. Doubtless they believed they must first pass the pinewood, and only then would they expect the killing to begin.

“We should follow General Lapeña,” the liaison officer said nervously.

Sir Thomas ignored the man. He was thinking still, his fingers tapping the saddle pommel. If he continued north, then the French would cut off the brigade on the hill above Barrosa. They would wheel right and attack up the beach, and Sir Thomas would be forced to try a makeshift defense with his left flank open to attack. No, he thought, better to fight the bastards here. It would not be an easy fight, it would be a damned scramble, but better that than continuing north and turning the sea’s edge red with his blood.

“My lord”—he was uncharacteristically formal as he glanced at Lord William Russell—“my compliments to Colonel Wheatley, and he is to bring his brigade here and face down these fellows. Tell him to send his skirmishers as fast as he can! I want the enemy engaged by the light bobs while the rest of his brigade comes up. Guns are to come here. Right here,” he stabbed a hand at the ground on which his horse stood. “Hurry now, no time to lose!” He beckoned to another aide, a young captain in the blue-faced red coat of the First Foot Guards. “James, compliments to General Dilkes, and I want his brigade here,” he gestured to the right. “He’s to take position between the guns and the hill. Order him to send his skirmishers first! Quick now! Quick as he can!”

The two aides vanished into the trees. Sir Thomas lingered a moment, watching the approaching French who were now less than half a mile off. He was taking a vast gamble. He wanted to hit them while they were unprepared, but he knew it would take time to bring his battalions through the thick trees, which is why he had asked for the light companies to come first. They could make a skirmish line on the heath, they could begin to kill the French, and Sir Thomas could only hope that the skirmishers would hold the French long enough for the rest of the battalions to arrive and begin their deadly volley fire. He looked at the liaison officer. “Be so good,” he said, “as to ride to General Lapeña and tell him the French are moving on the pinewood and that it is my intention to engage them and would be honored”—he was choosing his words carefully—“if the general could lead men onto the right flank of the enemy.”

The Spaniard rode away and Sir Thomas looked back east. The French were coming in two huge columns. He planned to face the northern column with Wheatley’s brigade, while General Dilkes and his guardsmen would confront the column closest to the Cerro del Puerco. And that made him think of the Spaniards on the hill. The French would surely send their southern column to take that hill and they must not be allowed to do so, or else they could sweep down from its summit to attack the right flank of his hasty defense. He turned south, leading his remaining aides toward the Cerro del Puerco.

That hill, he thought as he rode back into the pines, was his one advantage. There were Spanish cannons on the summit, and those guns could fire down on the French. The hill was a fortress protecting his vulnerable right flank, and if the French could be held on the plain then the brigade on the hill could be used to make an attack on the enemy’s flank. Thank God, he was thinking as he rode out of the trees, that the hill was his.

Except it was not. The Cerro del Puerco had been abandoned and, even as Sir Thomas had ridden south, the first French battalions were climbing the hill’s eastern slopes. The enemy now held the Cerro del Puerco and the only allied troops in sight were the five hundred men of the Gibraltar Flankers. Instead of holding the high ground, they were forming into a column of march at the hill’s foot. “Browne! Browne!” Sir Thomas shouted as he cantered toward the column. “Why are you here? Why?”

“Because I’ve got half the French army climbing the damned hill, Sir Thomas.”

“Where are the Spaniards?”

“They ran.”

Sir Thomas stared at Browne for a heartbeat. “Well, it’s a bad business, Browne,” he said, “but you must instantly turn around again and attack.”

Major Browne’s eyes widened. “You want me to attack half their army?” he asked incredulously. “I saw six battalions and a battery of artillery coming! I’ve got only five hundred thirty-six muskets.” Browne, deserted by the Spaniards, had watched the mass of infantry and cannon approaching the hill, and had decided that retreat was better than suicide. There were no other British troops within sight, he had no promises of reinforcement, and so he had led his Gibraltar Flankers north, off the hill. Now he was being told to go back, and he took a deep breath, as if steeling himself for the ordeal. “If we must,” he said, stoically accepting his fate, “then we will.”

“You must,” Sir Thomas said, “because I need the hill. I’m sorry, Browne, I need it. But General Dilkes is coming. I’ll bring him up to you myself.”

Browne turned to his adjutant. “Major Blakeney! Skirmish order! Back up the hill! Drive the devils away!”

“Sir Thomas?” an aide interrupted, then pointed to the hill’s summit, where the first French battalions were already appearing. Blue coats were showing at the skyline, a great array of blue coats ready to come down the slope and scour their way along the pinewood.

Sir Thomas gazed at the French. “Light bobs won’t stop them, Browne,” he said. “You’ll have to give them volley fire.”

“Close order!” Browne shouted at his men who had started to deploy into skirmish order.

“They have a battery of cannon up there, Sir Thomas,” the aide said quietly.

Sir Thomas ignored the news. It did not matter if the French had all the emperor’s artillery on the hilltop, they still had to be attacked. They had to be thrown off the hill, and that meant the only available troops must climb the slope and make an assault that would hold the French in place until General Dilkes’s guardsmen came to assist them. “God be with you, Browne,” Sir Thomas said too quietly for the major to hear. Sir Thomas knew he was sending Browne’s men to their deaths, but they had to die to give the Guards time to arrive. He sent an aide to summon Dilkes’s men. “He’s to ignore my last order,” Sir Thomas said, “and to bring his men here with the utmost speed. The utmost speed! Go!”